At the Minnesota Attorney General debate between Keith X. Ellison and Doug Wardlow, the Republican raised Ellison's well known membership in the racist Nation of Islam hate group.

Ellison sneers through Wardlow's remarks and then offers some of the usual lies about his time there being limited to the early 90s, followed by the claim that Farrakhan back then was speaking to issues of civil rights.

"Look, in the early 1990s, Louis Farrakhan was a person speaking to issues of African-American civil rights, at that time, he had, I thought, something to offer," Keith Ellison claimed.

Farrakhan in the early 90s was even worse than he is now. And Ellison was repeatedly accused of being complicit in anti-Semitism.

And, back in 1989, Keith Ellison was already being condemned for anti-Semitism. The Minnesota Daily opinion editor, Michael Olenick, described Ellison’s writing as "a genuine threat to the long-term safety and well-being of the Jewish people, a threat that history dictates must not be ignored."

"Time and time again my people have been slaughtered after the words of Hakim (Ellison) and those like him influenced the masses," Olenick writes.

So the idea that Ellison had distanced himself from Farrakhan's anti-Semitism is nonsense.

Instead Ellison actually defends the leader of a racist hate group as having something to offer.

Farrakhan made headlines in 1984 for calling Judaism a “gutter religion” and Hitler “a very great man.” In 1994, Farrakhan said: “Murder and lying comes easy for white people.” All this came BEFORE Ellison praised him as “a role model” in 1995, and was photographed selling Farrakhan’s newspaper in 1998.

And Ellison, as has been documented, is lying when he claims that he ended his ties to the Nation of Islam back then. He first ran for office while associated with the Nation of Islam. And has, more recently, met with Farrakhan.

In 1997, two years later, he was defending the Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitism and praising “Minister Farrakhan” as a “tireless servant of Black people”.

In 1998, Ellison ran for office as affiliated with the Nation of Islam on a platform of, among other things, having Nation of Islam thugs patrol neighborhoods. He complained about a “propaganda war” being waged against “Minister Louis Farrakhan”.

In 2000, five years later, Ellison is still referring to “Minister Farrakhan” and spewing NOI conspiracy theories.

But the media refuses to call out Keith Ellison for his lies. And Republicans have been slow to get the facts and speak out.